2026 Community Moves Mainstage 1
Welcome to the 2026 Community Moves Mainstage 1!
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | Shelby Richardson
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR | Giselle Liu
MUSIC DIRECTOR | Katherine Benny
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR | Ray Morgan
PROGRAM
LAST BREATH
Choreography by Joquin Crespo Lopes
Performed by Miguel Nguyen
Last Breath traces a terminally ill individual’s emotional journey from fear and frustration toward reflection and acceptance. As vulnerability deepens, they recognize health as a form of love often taken for granted. In the end, peace emerges, grounded in connection and meaning—a meditation on gratitude, presence, and living fully before time slips away.
Born in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Miguel Nguyen is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and educator trained in ballet, contemporary, jazz, and hip-hop. He studied at the National Ballet School of Canada and Goh Ballet, and performed internationally with Orlando Ballet II and the State Ballet of Georgia. A former Principal with Ballet del Centro del Conocimiento in Argentina, Miguel has worked across Canada and Latin America as a guest artist, adjudicator, and teacher, and co-founded Posadas Ballet Studio.
LONESOME
Choreographed by Tedd Robinson/Claudia Moore
Performed by Claudia Moore
Music - For No One (Paul McCartney/John Lennon sung by Rickie Lee Jones) and Ever Thus (composer/musician Laurel MacDonald)
Claudia Moore is a celebrated Canadian dancer active since the 1970s. A former National Ballet of Canada performer, she became a leading contemporary artist with Toronto Dance Theatre. Founder of Moonhorse Dance Theatre and Older & Reckless, she now lives in Kelowna, working as a performer, mentor, and community dance leader.
CIRCLE OF TRUST
Presentation by Cat Sivertsen & Shaya Dyble
Exhibition in Lobby
Las Mujeronas
Choreographed by Jhoely Triana
Performed by Jhoely Triana, Luiza Libardi, Jessica Oryall
Las Mujeronas [loss moo hair OWN us]. It means strong women.
Las Mujeronas brings together a group of immigrant women to explore the impact of immigration on identity, memory, and cultural expression.
Through rhythm, movement, and lived experience, Las Mujeronas invites audiences into a bold and intimate reimagining of home and heritage.
Jhoely Triana is a Colombian-born flamenco dancer and choreographer based in Vancouver. With a diverse dance background, Jhoely trained at the Goh Ballet Academy, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Dance from Simon Fraser University, and honed her flamenco skills at Al Mozaico Flamenco and Rosario Flamenco.
May 19, 2026
Community Moves Mainstage 2
Community Moves Mainstage 2
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR | Shelby Richardson
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR | Giselle Liu
MUSIC DIRECTOR | Katherine Benny
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR | Ray Morgan
This performance includes strobe lighting and haze. These effects may impact people with epilepsy, light sensitivity, or respiratory conditions.
Left Unsaid: 盡在不言中
Creative Director : Giselle Liu (Choreography in collaboration with performers.)
Sound Design and Composition: Charlie Cooper and Giselle Liu
Performers: Shayla Dyble, Lauren Fisher, Sara McGowan
Technical Director: Ray J Morgan
Mask Designer: Lisa Dickson
Phase 1 Creative Collaborators and Contributors: Isabelle Dansereau-Corradi, Angela Piché, Keli Watson
20 minutes
Left Unsaid: 盡在不言中 is an interdisciplinary work-in-progress in experimental performance. The piece explores distinct experiences of grief, each carried and expressed differently through the body.
Working across movement, sound, sensors, and water, these elements interact to shape and transform one another, tracing how grief shifts through lived experience and asking: what remains?
Giselle Liu is an interdisciplinary choreographer whose work explores intergenerational and intercultural dialogue through embodied storytelling. Working across dance, mixed media, installation, and community-based practice, she creates projects that bridge artistic disciplines and lived experience. She holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and an MA in Expressive Arts Therapy from the European Graduate School, and her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council.
Charlie Cooper is a musician working across live performance, installation, and sound design. His practice combines instruments, objects, and field recordings, often incorporating electroacoustics, video, and text. He is an active cross-disciplinary collaborator, working across dance, theatre, and digital media.
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The Moon
Choreographed by Anya Saugstad in collaboration with the dancers.
Danced by Shion Skye Carter and Anya Saugstad alongside invited community dancers.
Projection and Lighting Design by Andie Lloyd.
Contributing collaborators/dancers involved in the research: Nasiv Kaur Sall, Meredith Gaston, Liz Kiss, Gabi Johnson.
Music by Ben Waters.
Special thanks to New Works, Simon Fraser University, and Method Dance Society.
20 minutes
The Moon is a work in development that explores cycles, circles, loops, seasons, lifetimes, and existences. Built entirely from cyclical and repetitive movement within duets, the piece brings together dancers across three generations to ask what it means to be in relationship with one another through time and space. Merging projection design, lighting, dance, and music, the work is an ode to our fleeting existence and the cycles that surround and live within us.
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Anya Saugstad is a dancer, choreographer, and the artistic director of Furious Grace Dance Theatre based in Vancouver Canada, on the territory of the Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh', Stó:lō and Səlílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh, and xwməθkwəyə̓ m First Nations.
"My work is concerned with ecological grief, feminine anger, ritual, and juxtaposition of beauty and grit which manifests itself as live performance works, nature based movement art, writing, workshopping, and collaboration.”
Anya has created works for Springboard Danse, Ballet Edmonton, ArtsUmbrella, LamonDance, Simon Fraser University, and Coastal City Ballet. Anya’s work has been presented throughout Canada (in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver) and recently in the USA.
Shion Skye Carter (they/she) is a dance artist originally from Gifu, Japan, based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples. Through a movement language of sensitive intensity and hybridizing choreography with heritage art forms like calligraphy, Shion’s artistic practice peels apart layers of identity and reflects on the complexities of the human experience. Recent presentations of their work include VIDF (BC), Tangente (QC), Live Art Dance (NS), b12 free radicals (Berlin), and L’AiR Arts Atelier 11 (Paris), and they perform with companies such as Action at a Distance/Vanessa Goodman, Furious Grace Dance Theatre/Anya Saugstad, Wen Wei Dance, and Odd Meridian Arts/Ziyian Kwan. Shion's choreography has been recognized by the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2021), the Chrystal Dance Prize (2023), and most recently, their solo Cobalt was shortlisted for the Bloom International Dance Prize at Sadler’s Wells, London, UK (2027 edition).
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Entre Chien et Loup
Choreography and Performance James Gnam
Rehearsal Direction Natalie LeFebvre Gnam
Lighting Design James Proudfoot
Sound Design Loscil (Scott Morgan)
Media Design and Integration Eric Chad and Dan O’Shea
Outside Eye Vanessa Goodman
Photography David Cooper
45 minutes
Entre Chien et Loup names the fragile hour when the world slips out of certainty. It is twilight — the gloaming — when light thins and the contours of things begin to blur. The phrase comes from an old French sensitivity to atmosphere: the threshold when day loosens its grip and night begins to gather, when colours drain into blue and grey and edges soften. What was once clear becomes ambiguous. Between dog and wolf lies an hour of transformation, when the known and the unknown coexist, and safety and danger, intimacy and distance, the domestic and the feral share the same ground. It is a time when imagination awakens and perception becomes uncertain. In this collaboration, choreographer James Gnam, composer and sound artist Scott Morgan, lighting designer James Proudfoot, and media artist Eric Chad work together to explore a shared landscape of perception and transformation. Together, they create a shifting perceptual terrain where the boundaries between presence and absence, form and atmosphere, body and environment remain fluid. The work invites audiences into a threshold space — where perception becomes unstable, imagination awakens, and the familiar world briefly transforms.
James Gnam (he/him) is a dance artist based in Vancouver and Montreal. He is the artistic director of Plastic Orchid Factory, a founding member of Left of Main, as well as an associate artist with MAYDAY and Grand Poney. He trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and from 1998 to the present, has performed in the works of Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Jiri Kylian, Barak Marshall and collaborated in the creation of new work with Lee Su-Feh, Jacques Poulin-Denis, Melanie Demers, Vanessa Goodman, Evann Siebens, Peter Bingham and Tedd Robinson. With plastic orchid, James collaboratively devises interdisciplinary work that focuses the body as a site of social commentary. James’ research and performance have been supported by Opera Estate in Bassano Italy; Circuit-Est in Montreal; Centre Q and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa; Electric Company Theatre, The New Forms Festival, The Vancouver Art gallery, The Burrard Arts Foundation/Facade Festival, The Belkin Gallery and SFU/W in Vancouver.
May 23, 2026
